Tornadoes may be state’s worst natural disaster

TUSCALOOSA | It’s hard for Shirley Banks to remember everything that happened when her house blew away, but she does remember seeing the tornado engulfing her.“It was there. It was there,” she said over and over, pointing to the pile of rubble that was once the house she rented in Holt. “You could see the cloud. It was sitting right there. Everybody was floating a little. It didn’t seem right.” For Banks and scores of others in Tuscaloosa County and across the state, any reference to “the tornado” means a brush with the devil that wrecked their lives.But there were at least 38 tornadoes that tore through the state April 27, and as the people of Alabama emerge from the tornado outbreak of that day, it’s clear Mother Nature dealt a crushing blow to the state, possibly the worst natural disaster in state history.“We have nothing to compare it to in terms of sheer devastation,” said Yasamie August, spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency. “It’s hard to imagine something like this happening before.”Those 38 twisters left a trail of destruction 1,025 miles long across the state. At least 236 died in Alabama, and thousands were injured. It’s close to the deadliest natural disaster in state history, and might eclipse a super tornado outbreak in 1932 that left 270 dead if the death toll continues to inch upward.

By Adam JonesStaff Writer

TUSCALOOSA | It’s hard for Shirley Banks to remember everything that happened when her house blew away, but she does remember seeing the tornado engulfing her.“It was there. It was there,” she said over and over, pointing to the pile of rubble that was once the house she rented in Holt. “You could see the cloud. It was sitting right there. Everybody was floating a little. It didn’t seem right.” For Banks and scores of others in Tuscaloosa County and across the state, any reference to “the tornado” means a brush with the devil that wrecked their lives.But there were at least 38 tornadoes that tore through the state April 27, and as the people of Alabama emerge from the tornado outbreak of that day, it’s clear Mother Nature dealt a crushing blow to the state, possibly the worst natural disaster in state history.“We have nothing to compare it to in terms of sheer devastation,” said Yasamie August, spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency. “It’s hard to imagine something like this happening before.”Those 38 twisters left a trail of destruction 1,025 miles long across the state. At least 236 died in Alabama, and thousands were injured. It’s close to the deadliest natural disaster in state history, and might eclipse a super tornado outbreak in 1932 that left 270 dead if the death toll continues to inch upward.In all, 42 counties, about two-thirds of the state, are designated for disaster relief by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It’s the highest number of disaster relief-eligible counties since Hurricane Ivan struck the state in 2004.There’s no solid estimate of how much damage the tornado outbreak left behind, but it’s on a path to be the most expensive. In what state officials are calling the first wave, an estimated 65,000 Alabamians have filed an insurance claim, according to the Alabama Department of Insurance.Through FEMA, the federal government will cover most uninsured losses reported to the agency. Through Sunday afternoon, about 46,000 individuals or households had applied for FEMA aid, and $23.6 million in federal grants had been doled out, said Tim Tyson, FEMA spokesman.That’s likely the tip of the iceberg of federal money moving into the state.“We know this is the largest amount of damage ever caused by tornadoes at one time in Alabama history. There’s no question about that,” said Ragan Ingram, department spokesman. “We’re clearly going to measure this against large hurricane events.”In Alabama, that means Hurricane Ivan. The Category 3 hurricane made landfall near Gulf Shores, causing about $2 billion in damage covered by insurance. It triggered at least $735 million in federal aid. Fifty-one of the state’s counties were designated for federal disaster assistance.Across the Southeast, Ivan was responsible for 25 deaths.The costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, not counting for inflation, is Hurricane Katrina in 2005, responsible for at least 1,500 deaths across the Southeast and more than $81 billion in federal aid.Alabama dodged the main force of Katrina, with 24 people dying in the state as a result of the storm. Its insured losses were about $1 billion in the state, and there was nearly $500 million in federal aid to the state.An early and crude estimate of the insured damage from the April 27 outbreak in the Southeast was between $2 billion and $5 billion, but the state should have a better estimate of losses in Alabama soon, Ingram said.As for federal disaster aid to individuals, business and governments, it too early to tell, August said. Most affected areas were still searching for victims late into the work week, so the initial disaster response is just now close to ending.“It’s so massive and so large, it’s hard to sit down and quantify it,” she said.It takes $5.8 million in estimated federal aid in the state to qualify for disaster designation, a threshold likely passed within just a few blocks in the city of Tuscaloosa, Gov. Robert Bentley said the day after the storms. State EMA officials don’t have detailed damage reports, they simply eyeballed the destruction from the air to ensure federal disaster thresholds were met, August said.One reason the tornado outbreak could top all other disasters is the higher population and development in the affected areas.For instance, the outbreak in 1932 included an F4 tornado that killed 37 in Northport, the deadliest natural disaster recorded in Tuscaloosa County until last week. The April 27 EF4 tornado caused 41 confirmed deaths as it ripped across 30 miles of the county, including 6 miles of some of the most densely populated areas.The 1932 tornado leveled 98 homes and damaged hundreds others. About 2,000 people were left homeless, according to a remembrance of the storm in The Tuscaloosa News in 1968.The county now is much more populated than in 1932, and this tornado is estimated to have destroyed or severely damaged 5,000 buildings in the city of Tuscaloosa, including homes. It’s possible 20,000 people are directly affected, and cleanup in the city could cost as much as $100 million, according to early city estimates.“At the beginning of this cleanup, it’s going to look like we’re throwing rocks at a battleship,” Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said at a recent news conference. “But we’re out there, and we’re moving. And it’s going to take time, but we’re going to cross that finish line.”

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